The vast David Hockney show at the Royal Academy (until 9 April) is deliberately overwhelming. What it most looks like is an overblown, hyped-up, hyperreal parody of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, that super-English annual gathering of the amateur art establishment, to which the buying public with large pocketbooks flock from the Home Counties and beyond. The curator given credit for having the idea for the show, Edith Devaney, also runs the summer exhibition, and everything about the Hockney display, which reaches into all corners of the main floor of Burlington House, is pageantry on a grand scale.

LRB 9 February 2012 | PDF Download